58 Responses to “Ellory On Fake Vaginas”

There is no reason why anyone should be pressured to perform “male” or perform “female” in opposition to their biological sex. Why can’t we just be who and what we are (biological males, biological females or the rare biological intersex) and stop trying to color every preference, behavior or feeling of complex human beings with a pink crayon or a blue crayon? If you want to wear mascara, be a male or female or intersex person wearing mascara. No need to change your sex to wear mascara. If you want to spend every evening at the gym lifting free weights, be a male or female or intersex person who likes to lift weights. You don’t have to “switch sides” in order to justify a desire to lift weights.

I get the feeling that the male in this YouTube post kinda gets it, but is getting soooooooo much pressure to fall in line with the current “trans” mythology that it’s making him distraught and unbalanced.

I have always had a strong sense of myself as a female, so I can put on heavy boots, jeans and a tee-shirt or crop my hair short or drive a dump truck without feeling “now I’m not female” — or I can put on silk undies, a dress and full make-up or let my hair grow to my waist without feeling “OK, now I’m female”.

I’m always female, no matter what I’m wearing or what I’m doing. Thinking otherwise is merely a symptom of brainwashing from our patriarchal culture. It’s not objective reality.

Hear hear. He wants to live in and look a way that is stereotyped “feminine” (note the quotes) and he should be free to do that, regardless of being born male or female.

It should be okay for your behavior or your looks to be androgynous or “crossing” or not conform to anything. Male, OR female.

What caused me to think about things was someone questioning, what exactly does it mean to “think like a woman” or “have a woman’s brain?” I think like me. I don’t fit “feminine” stereotypes. I don’t fall on the “girl” side of the various stereotyped behavior graphs, most of the time.

But I’m not a male, and wouldn’t claim to be one. I’m a woman. However I think, that’s one example of “female brain” that should be added to that side, even if it messes up the precious data.

And the person in the You Tube video, is just one more example of a variety of male behavior, that’s okay too.

If he goes out like that and runs into misogyny (if people assume he’s a girl with all that goes with it) he can legitimately comment on that, I think. And if someone else considers him “tricking” when they find out he’s male even when he hasn’t said boo to them (because THEY did some snap judging), and so he runs into homophobia, he can legitimately comment on that too. All without a sex change, and while being honestly himself.

First off this is a ripped off video, even the person who used the title above had copied the video from the original poster on youtube without permission and changed her name to prevent finding out who the owner/poster is, and didn’t identity themselves by name on youtube OR this site, and I have reported it to youtube, and let the real owner know about the rip-off so they may do the same:

The real owner of this is Ellery ….NOT Ellory!
The real title is MY OPINION ON MY GENDER
The copier/thief is UNKNOWN

As for the original video and owner, she states it’s just her OPINION (not her legal status) on her OWN gender, not anyone else’s gender or status. So to try to make her self-views on her own body apply to anyone else, much less the correct public identity (such as in conversation or driver’s license) would be wrong.

Her opinion also is NOT a legal opinion, meaning the laws don’t go by such subjective views. Right now this girl is in the mist of her transition (on hormones no surgery yet) but has socially transitioned. Her self views may, and are likely, to change over time, and she may at some point undergo SRS and become LEGALLY a female (she said she was uncertain now in yet another video of hers.

Right now she is woman-gendered, but male-female in body (main sex is male but with secondary female characteristics. That is a normal transitional stage for many full-on TS-woman, many who go on to eventually move on to woman-female legal status by undergoing SRS (bottom surgery).

Anything more than those social and legal levels are pure and private medical concerns, and not the business of the public and social activist or haters. Trying to make selective criteria here and force it backwards is reverse social engineering and based on some phobia and attempt to interfere with a woman’s/man’s rights to their privacy and medical concerns.

Also the author and this web site didn’t INFORM this woman about using her video or give her a right to respond to any comments, so it’s backhanded sneaky methods.

Note the thief on youtube also screen all comments so there is no fair discussion by viewers there as well.

This tactic of stealing videos then re-posting the copies to yet another site in order to mudsling on an entire community is deception, lying and bigoted.

And this site using her video is also being reported to this trans-woman victim and to workpress!

Don’t post crap on YouTube if you don’t want it bumping around the interwebs until the end of time.

The video above is embedded. You just click the little YouTube icon to take you back to where it was posted on YouTube. People do this millions of times per day. Everything from funny cat videos to news videos to videos of endless, boring, delusional navel-gazing by “trans women”.

Everything I do, everything I am, is inherently feminine because I’m female. As we each move through the world, we define feminity as we are, as individuals on our own terms, because we are female. We just are.

It’s the association of certain behaviors with “feminine” that’s the social construct.

Any sort of person, of any physical or genetic makeup, should be free to engage in any sort of behavior, there should be no sense of “matching up” or not. You have a body, and you have a behavior, and they’re yours, and that’s fine just like it is.

It’s the dividing of the behaviors into blue and pink camps that’s the problem.

If feminine means ONLY “a woman does it” then fine, not a problem. If feminine means ONLY “this sort of behavior” then fine, not a problem.

The problem is when the word is forced to mean both things. That’s where the patriarchy comes in. There is no reason to require any particular relationship of genitalia (physical body reality) to behaviors.

When we humans started trying to stuff the thousands of different behaviors, traits, tendencies and qualities of human beings into “masculine” and “feminine”, we created a monster.

If we re-define feminine as “whatever traits women possess” and re-define masculine as “whatever traits men possess” then the words lose all useful meaning — there can be no objective, universal categorization of any human quality or trait as being limited to one sex or the other. Both of these terms are only useful as linguistic/cultural short-hand if you suspend your experience of reality, filter out all the delicate men and the aggressive women, filter out all the hyper-rational female hard scientists and all the nurturant stay-at-home dads.

I realize that I’m preaching to the choir here, for the most part, but I think it bears repeating. Maybe one of the “trans” people or their enablers who love to hate GM will happen by and catch a clue.

I believe what you say about women – that we can be all of those things, but I’m not so sure I believe it about men. For instance, I’d have to suspend *my* experience of reality to believe in all the “nurturant stay-at-home dads” you talk about. My experience of men is that they are relatively inferior at nurturing and my feeling is that even if one wasn’t, I wouldn’t want nurturing from him, only from a woman.

Well, if he were your biological father and had been caring for you full-time since birth with great compassion and dedication, you might feel differently.

My own father was only capable of ignoring or hurting, but I have witnessed a young family member by marriage provide 24/7 care to his cancer-stricken infant (diagnosed at 14 months) and do a better job of it than I would have at the young father’s age, despite my ovaries and whatnot. From changing filthy diapers, feeding, holding and comforting, distracting and playing, changing medical dressings, etc. there’s nothing he won’t do for his child, nothing he tries to fob off on the women around him.

I know another full-time dad who also does an amazing job with very young children without whining that he needs a woman to do the messy parts for him. He just does what needs doing with a cheerful warmth that women of my generation almost never saw in our fathers.

I think we’d be remiss to ignore the fact that as each generation comes of age, the lessons of feminism are slowly, slowly, slowly sinking in. But my point wasn’t to proselytize about how nurturing men-in-general are, it was to decry that we as a species keep festooning human traits with pink and blue ribbons.

Well, if he were your biological father and had been caring for you full-time since birth with great compassion and dedication, you might feel differently.

That is a very odd statement. Biological father? There are genetic fathers, due to the contribution of their sperm, but fathers and babies just do not have the biological, organic connection that mothers and babies do. I suppose if my genetic father had been caring for me with great compassion and dedication since birth and I had never known mother love, I wouldn’t know any better.

It’s not that I believe all women are better nurturers than all men, as there are non nurturant women, I just don’t think the best of men in that regard can compare with the best of women, and I simply don’t want even the best of men, just the best of women.

I take it a step further. There are a few, biologically-based things that men can do that women cannot, e.g. ejaculate semen or get prostate cancer, etc. There are a few, biologically-based things that women can do that men cannot, e.g. menstruate, ovulate, become pregnant, bear life young from our wombs, etc.

Other than that? We’re just…human beings. All other gendering of human traits, abilities or characteristics is cultural — and most of it is cultural hogwash.

Venus Williams could metaphorically slay most human males on the tennis court and Ferran Adrià could out-perform the vast majority of human females in the kitchen on his worst day. There are few men on the planet who could have out-programmed Admiral Grace Hopper during her heyday. We are taught to associate “ballet dancer” with little girls in pink, but who among us could out-perform Mikhail Baryshnikov on the dance floor?

In order to form these sexist silos of human traits, we have to filter out reality. Not good. This kind of mental partitioning is not good for us, as individual human beings, and it’s certainly not good for human cultures.

Whilst I understand and certainly agree with what you’re saying for the most part. Can I just say that there are differences between the sexes that are rooted in biology, that are more than the different, tangible, sex-based, anatomical bodies.

As I’ve said there are the intangible things such as presence, smell and energy which I was very much aware of from early girlhood and very much so as a lesbian. I am not simply attracted to another female’s biological, anatomical bodies, it’s far more profound than that, and at the risk of sounding essentialist again, it is that fundamental, intangible difference between males and females that has nothing to do with the patriarchal ”gendering of human traits, abilities or characteristics”, that draws me to females and not males, that moves me as a female-loving female.

Roseverbenna,
Yes chromozomes and secondary sex characteristics differentiate human beings and slot them into one of two distinct categories: male or female (despite what the trans propaganda and “research” will tell you.)

ANd yet…the true differences between men and women run much deeper than that. I’m not talking about femininity, which is a social construct created by a male supremacist culture. I’m talking about something else. I’m talking about the phenomenon of a woman sensing that there is a man in the room as soon as she enters, even if that man is dressed “like a woman” and “passes”. No man, including the man dressed “as a woman” has a clue what I’m talking about here.
Is this a learned trait in women? Do we learn to sense that there is a possible predator in the vicinity? It’s possible.
But when I hear about the mass rapes, tortures and murders that men, and men alone, have carried out over the centuries, and continue to carry out today, in Every. Single. War that has ever taken place (just read your history books), it strikes me, then, that rape and murder is a “man thing”, a sort of “man problem” that is not connected to women in any way shape or form.
It strikes me that the true differences between XX females and XY males are simply unfathomable.
Which is why when a person with XY chromozomes tries to act like a person with XX chromozomes, all women see is a farce. Some women humour the MTF, because they’ve been trained to humour all men for fear of repercussions; other women (like myself) can’t be bothered to humour them.

Also it’s important to remember when we compare mothers and fathers, that a man can do the bare minimum required and be hailed as a hero by all and sundry including his children. He is also supported by his culture because he’s a man.
THe only “good mother” is the one who died in childbirth. THe bar for mothers is held impossibly high. Psychologists teach patients to blame their mothers for everything that is wrong with their lives.

Everybody forgets that it is almost impossible for women to remain mentally stable living in such a woman-hating society.And yet women somehow manage to step up to the plate in the face of everybody willing them to fail.

I have seen enough of smug, satisfied genetic fathers rubbing it in the faces of mothers to last a lifetime, men who love to “show” women that even though the mother of his child almost split in two to deliver her baby in pain, he is now better at them at mothering.

And while we’re on the subject, let’s remember that the paedophiles are overwhelmingly male AND YET MEN SPEND VERY LITTLE TIME WITH CHILDREN COMPARED TO WOMEN. IN other words, considering how much time women spend with children, and how *little* time fathers do, it’s pretty shocking that the majority of child abusers are men.

I couldn’t agree more with you about being able to sense a male presence. It’s more than that I think, males give off a different smell, energy, as well as having a different presence from females – how else do animals tell the human sexes apart? Human males are the most feared by animals in general.

This may smack of biological essentialism but, it’s foolish to deny that there are essential biological differences between the sexes which also inform the senses, and this is what other animals are going by as well.

I read a book way back in the mid eighties called ”Tula, I am a woman” about the life of a post-op male-to-trans who modelled for ”soft porn” and appeared in one of those James Bond films.

Anyway, as a post-op trans his claim was that he was ”99% woman” (the 1% equalling the lack of a womb!). So it was most revealing that in his book he candidly spoke about his experience of ”glamour modelling” amongst some circus lions, as a post-op trans, and how deeply unnerved he was by their behaviour towards him, causing him to recognize the fact that they could actually sense his maleness.The lions weren’t fooled for a moment and he knew it and was honest enough to
acknowledge it. So-called SRS doesn’t appear to alter this fundamental difference.

Absolutely Purplerage, tiny children and animals can tell the difference between a male and female human being immediately, and it ain’t got anything to do with mascara. Cats are especially interesting in this respect.

I saw a film called “Public Speaking,” a documentary about Fran Lebowitz. (HBO, directed by Martin Scorese.) She has some interesting things to say about the differences between men and women. She thinks the primary factor in our differences is testosterone and the aggressiveness it causes in males.

Every night, the network new programs are dominated primarily by ads selling medication for ‘erectile dysfunction,’ and a condition they’re calling ‘low “T”‘. Testosterone levels drop with age, as they should; the manufacturers promise to fix every ailment, cure every woe; life will be better in every way with a little of this gel rubbed into the thigh. Better for MEN, of course.

Combine the two and we have more aggressive, and sexually more aggressive old men as well as young men running around.

I’m not sure if I buy into the idea that testosterone causes more aggressiveness in men, but those ads about “low T” are downright depressing. Whether or not some men tend to mellow with age because of declining T levels or simply due to the wisdom of experience, I hate seeing it portrayed as a “disease.” What, the guy is “sick” because he’s developed some empathy? Enjoys playing with his grandchildren? Well, we can fix that and make him a “real” man again!

I myself have been assaulted twice by female strangers. Once a group of three females physically assaulted me for no reason other than I was there and they wanted to hurt somebody.

The second time a female sexually assaulted me while she was being encouraged and applauded by a mixed-sex group — the police and I concluded afterwards that it was some kind of gang initiation. Fortunately the assault was brief and I was not physically injured…but psychologically? I will never be the same after that. It was life-altering in the extreme.

I absolutely agree that the vast majority of rapes and sexual assaults are committed by males, and I have been their victim more than once. However, it would be a grave and dangerous mistake to pretend that ONLY men are capable of rape/sexual assault. There are a lot of broken people in the world, and they come in both sexes.

There are also a lot of caring, nurturing, self-less people in the world, and they come in both sexes, too.

When I encounter anyone — male or female — who doesn’t get that, I think to myself, “Huh. I wonder why they’re choosing to wear that mental filter? Social programming? Abuse history? Denial? What?”

The police officer who was very gentle, respectful and compassionate with me after I was assaulted was male. The friends who picked me up and drove me home afterwards, making me tea and treating me with great kindness and concern, were male and female. The counselor who didn’t really help me after the assault — who was kind of flakey, narcissistic and incompetent — was female. The detective who was a real jerk with me afterwards on the phone was male. And so it goes.

I do think testosterone levels have a lot to do with aggression, but it’s only part of the picture. There’s a whole lot of socialization, brain chemistry, psycho-spiritual health, etc. in that mix, too. A woman on meth can do unspeakable things.

I think you have to look at the police and FBI statistics across the U.S. to get a true sense of just how outrageous and dangerous men really are. Radical feminism looks at the system, and the system of male violence against women overall. There are always exceptions, the women who do assult other women, but it doesn’t explain the vast majority of rapists, pedofiles and spousal abusers, all of whom happen to be men.

The point is in the system, so RoseV, this is an argument from an individual experience, it doesn’t get at the systemic nature of male violence within patriarchy. It’s the mistake men want women to make, and if they can fool us with exceptionalism, we won’t get at the core of male hatred of women worldwide.

How does a life-long feminist in her 50’s assimilate being sexually assaulted by a teenaged girl young enough to be her own granddaughter? I’m still working it out.

Apparently, y’all have all the answers, so do tell. Please. I’d love to hear it. The best I’ve been able to come up with it that sometimes human beings are vicious to other human beings and…it doesn’t really make any sense. How do you make sense out of that kind of madness? I’m sure you’ll have some “better” answer, something along the lines of “you’re lying” (that’s always a good one to throw at sexual abuse survivors — tried and true, that), or how about “your experience is so rare that it’s meaningless to even consider it” (marginalize me even more, that’s a good way to shut up sexual abuse survivors.)

you make sense of it by working out where the true power in society lies, and from there you begin to understand who are the most helpless and vulnerable are in any given society.
teenage girls for example, are probably the most vulnerable group of people in the entire world.

If someone talks about their experience being sexually assaulted on my blog I expect them to be treated with care. It’s easy to think in the abstract when responding to an internet post but lets remember we are real people commenting here. Lets be gentle and loving to one another, especially when responding to someone’s post about their experience being violently sexually assaulted.

Thank you, GallusMag. You’re the real deal, aren’t you? We’re so lucky to have you and this blog.

Me? I probably shouldn’t have even brought it up. It has been so very (impossibly?) hard for me to process what happened to me, it’s asking an awful lot of total strangers on the interwebs to set aside their preconceived notions long enough to even consider the meaning behind what I have experienced. Maybe I’ll write a book about it…I’ve been trying to “put it behind me” but maybe that’s not the right approach? I don’t know.

I just know that it has forced me to re-think EVERYTHING I thought I knew about what it means to be female. Everything. If I had been hit by a bolt of blue-green light from a space ship I wouldn’t have been more shocked, more emotionally shattered, than I was to be sexually assaulted by a viciously laughing teenaged GIRL. My mind kept turning it over and over, “What? Now I have to be afraid of girls, too? Young girls? Less than half the age of my nieces? Now these girls are also potential assailants? Huh. Why even go outside? Why live at all if this is the kind of world I am living in?”

I’ve reached a place of (semi-) acceptance that some people really, really suck — they’re just downright vile — and yet, and still, many people are good, kind, nurturing, responsible, respectful, gentle souls. But none of those traits have blue or pink attached to them for me anymore, and none of them are immutable. We’re all arrayed out on these every-shifting Bell curves and at any moment, anyone can be selfless and caring or snarky and cruel.

The bottom line for me on sex/gender is that while a Jon Stewart can be a MUCH better ally to lesbians than a Phyllis Schlafly or a Sarah Palin, I still don’t want to share a locker room, shower, bathroom or tent at MichFest with him. Which is where I came in to this blog in the first place.

Rose, I’m sorry to hear about your experience and about my flippant reply. To be honest, I didn’t read your comment thoroughly and just sent in my comments.
FOr what it’s worth I was horribly abused by my mother as a child, while my father was the “good guy” that I ran to for help (not that he was much better). Not that this is in any way relevant to your story, but I just wanted you to know that I didn’t intend to purposely dismiss your experience of abusive women. They exist, of course, but it is in many ways different, especially when women have so little power, and men have so much.
Anyway, hugs to you.

Why even go outside? Why live at all if this is the kind of world I am living in?”

As a female person you weren’t already cautious enough that you thought twice about going out in the first place? I mostly don’t venture into The World because of male-bodied people and my extreme discomfort of having to operate in their world – I don’t have the authority, nor the privilege, to make distinctions between whether they are *good guys* or *bad guys*. Also, I am not a person who takes statistics lightly, especially when it comes to sex-based crimes.

You say that it rocked your perception of what it is to be “female“, being assaulted by a teenaged girl? Where did you live that the only people out in the world were female? Because, seriously, that‘s where I want to be – an entire town, city, country, world that is inhabited by female-bodied human beings. Only.

There are exceptions to every rule, and exceptional people in every sphere of life. But the reason feminism exists is because of male supremacy and the subjugation of women. I don’t think that’s debatable.
Regardless of our individual experiences, however horrendous they may be, it’s still important to examine the world through the lens of institutions, systems. The abuse of women by men is systemic and institutionalized. The sexual abuse of children by male pedophiles is, too. And of course, there are women who are the exceptions, who are in the minority.

The question is, what do we choose to fight? How can we best affect change? If we ignore the reality that the primary abusers are male and the victims of that abuse female, what do we do and how to go about it?

To be betrayed, in a sense, by one’s own is truly horrible. I, too, suffered at the hands of a woman when I was young. But I need to see HER life through the same lens, and ask myself why she did what she did in order to make any difference in the world. And I always come up with the same answer: She acted that way because she, too, was oppressed by a male-dominated world that she could not escape.

To stop abuse, I think we must stop the oppression. To do that, we can’t help but recognize who the oppressors are.

Regarding working to end systemic oppression, isn’t that predicated on a belief that it’s possible to end systemic oppression? If it’s possible to do so, then what does that say about the potential of female AND male human beings? If we believe that it’s worth the effort to try and end the oppression then we must also believe that changing the socialization, changing the cultural supports for oppression, smashing the old paradigms can succeed, right? Otherwise, why try?

I believe that an egalitarian world (the world as it will be after we’re done smashing the patriarchy) will be filled with women and men who don’t fit into any of our current preconceived ideas of what it means to be female OR of what it means to be male.

In a world where rape is as rare as hen’s teeth, where everyone is socialized from birth towards respectful compassion and self-control over abusive behaviors — and away from narcissistic indulgence in violence — what immutable traits will these societies attribute to XX people vs XY people?

I don’t think violence is innate to either gender, but it certainly is encouraged and supported in men by our culture. They are taught from day one to be less empathetic, less nurturing, more aggressive, and then this is reinforced by the system all through their lives. That’s why I don’t really buy into the idea that testosterone causes aggression, because there is so much social conditioning going on, it’s nearly impossible to separate cause and effect. Our culture creates a lot of excuses for men, they just can’t help themselves, they’re victims of their own biology, boys will be boys, etc.

anyone know what repercussions there were, if any, to this man telling it like it is? i know the trans borg hate this kind of stuff. very brave.

also re testosterone, yes, its impossible to tell for sure what the exact cause/effect is wrt male aggression, bc for one thing, BEING aggressive and BEING in violent altercations and environments has been shown to increase T in men. in other words, ACTING MALE can CAUSE T to rise. but who cares really? the end result is that men are dangerous to women and children. either way you slice it, thats the end result and its the truth. the only solution that takes into consideration the SAFETY of women and children, is to keep boys over a certain age and men away from women and children. but strangely (or not so) everyone is focused on trying to figure out whether the violent chicken or the poisonous egg came first. and *thats* just an excuse to leave men right where they are, within easy access to girls and women.

Rose, my heart goes out to you! It must have been a truly devastating ordeal and it is testimony to your strength that you’ve survived to this day.

I know how I continue to struggle to this day living with the impact of having been sexually violated and I’ve known lesbians (radical feminist and non-feminist) who were raped by other women who’ve shared their own painful struggles with me.

We all have our own personal histories and experiences – there is so much more to us than the words we type in ‘leave a reply’. As we are mostly strangers to one another, there will always likely be breakdowns in communication and misunderstandings.

The internet is not the best of mediums for us to discuss complex subject matters with eachother since we often can’t or don’t go into as much depth as we’d like, nor can we ‘feel’ the tone in which something is written, and are mainly responding in short paragraphs only to what others have written (without a context of what lies behind their words). To put it simplistically, the internet is a tricky sh*t!

Thank you, Purplerage. I’m very, very sorry that you had to experience being violated, too.

I was a very small child (3?) the first time I was abused. I sometimes try to wonder who and what I’d be if I’d never been violated, never been abused. Do you? I imagine this very relaxed, content version of myself — one who sleeps through the night, spends a lot of time writing and playing music, who moves with self-confidence through the world without over-thinking every decision a thousand times. A doer instead of a worrier. A happy participant in social gatherings instead of a person who likes to keep her back to a wall and her eyes scanning the crowd for danger — or who just opts out because it’s too darn scary to venture into the world.

Ending the oppression, the abuse, the violence would free up so much creativity, so much productivity in all of us.

Rose my heart to you. I’ve tried several times on rf sites to bring this up only to be met with what you’re experiencing here. Just want you to know, here’s another with experience of that not to me, but to a family member. I’ve been sexually abused, raped and prostituted by men, but It is double bad, Gallus, when a female is sexually abused by a female, because in feminist and lesbian circles I have found we are silenced and shamed for saying a woman did this thing. Until your statement to Rose, Gallus, I’ve never heard a feminist validate this painful unmet confession. Thank you. It is just too much to ask that the victim understand the dynamics of patriarchy. Every time. That’s what’s said.

I too was a very small child, infact I was sexually violated in early infancy by the man who pimped my mother (he babysat me and was considered to be ”good with children”). I found out later that he’d murdered his own Iittle girl, in his homeland (he asphyxiated her with his penis). I have suffered from genital trauma all through my entire life as a result of what he did to me, and continue to struggle to be present in my body like so many others.

I cannot truthfully even imagine what my life, or what I would have been like if if I had not be violated at so young an age. My creativity and intellectual curiosity were my life line, my refuge was and is my mind and my heart. (Absolute respect for the sacredness of another’s body, bodily autonomy and mind is something I care ferociously about.)

Always questioning, I came to learn from my experiences, make connections with other females who had suffered, think macroscopically and understand that what happened to me and others wasn’t simply some horrendous, personal misfortune that had befallen us, but that it was political and I went on from there. I profoundly thank radical feminism for that, and in particular, for me, lesbian radical feminism.

I have suffered at the hands of a number of females, mainly in the context of racial abuse and lesbian-hating abuse (which included physical assaults and sexual harrassment). I know how abusive and frightening damaged females can be, poisoned by patriarchy in a myriad of ways. In retrospect, I came to see just how deeply the females who were abusive to me and others were incredibly male-identified and conditioned to uphold white male-supremacist hetero-patriarchal values and dictates.The writings and cogent analyses of wonderful, female-loving radical feminist activists helped me to understand that in all its complexity.

I do not have a romanticised view of my sex, I never did. We are, globally, a deeply and violently oppressed people on the basis of our biological sex alone, whatever our other (constructed) differences may be. We are more often than not pitted against each other, male supremacy is built on our backs and is sustained by our divisions and fragmentation, and as with other oppressed peoples, our conditioning is meant to serve our oppressor.

However, as one who is female-centred I have to say that, I too, want very much to be in an all female environment, and yes I’ve dreamt of an all female world. I don’t have an investment in men or boys, it’s very different for those who do. Whilst there may be decent, gentle, caring men in the world, they are outliers, they exist despite male-supremacy, not because of it and are not for the most part visible or vocal. (I find the male left to be odiously male-supremacist and phallocentric, and they actually claim to be ”humanitarian” and ”humanist”.)

I note some of the other commenters feel the same as I do about wanting an all female town/city/country/world which is greatly uplifting to read, this is one of the few spaces (thank you Gallus <3) where we can freely express that heartfelt desire no matter how much we know it will never be – at least not in our lifetimes?

I also despair at the state of lesbian culture, with regards to the devastating impact of the sexploitation industry and the ''selling'' of male-supremacist sexuality to lesbians, the impact of queer politics, post-modernism and male-to-trans-instrusion and the many, many manifestations of internalized misogyny amongst lesbians that goes unaddressed due to all the above is heart-breaking to me.

I have never been one to shy away from questioning and critiquing what is rotten amongst our own, both as members of the female sex-class and as lesbians. I, and others I know, strive to understand how oppression and misogyny continues to effect us all, taking on stranger and more disturbing forms – the female-to-trans explosion and its subculture being just one such example that Gallus is covering here on her blog.

Anyway, I've gone on for far too long (sorry about that Gallus) and I know my grammar is very poor. All the best to you Rose XO

Rose, I’m so sorry that happened to you. I basically agree with those who are among the few in the world who recognize how dangerous boys and men can be, while most women just worship them and excuse their violence. But I do know that some females can be vicious and dangerous. I know girls are vulnerable, and I loved girls when I was a girl, but as an adult, I do not particularly want to be around young or teenaged girls because I’ve been harassed by them. I know there are girls who are very nice, but, as a group, I don’t feel safe with them.

Still, I wonder what was behind what that girl did to you. My ex described being gang-raped and tortured as a 14 year old Lesbian by a group of men and boys, who also had girls participating. It sounded like the girls were doing it to be popular with the boys, but still…. I guess I would think that boys raised with love, ideal families, and no trauma (like some serial rapist/killers say), can still rape and murder just because they enjoy it. But I believe when the few girls sexually assault or murder, they’ve been seriously traumatized — though that is never an excuse. Ever.

I remember years ago a Lesbian Feminist friend saying how she had been touched, laughed at, and taunted by name by a young teenaged girl hanging out with boys on the street in her town — the girl had been raised by Radical Lesbian Feminists and clearly was making up for lost time in getting teenaged het privilege at the expense of ridiculing an adult Lesbian for the benefit of boys.

When I am alone late at night on a city street and I hear a group of women behind me I just do not feel unsafe like I do if it’s a group of boys or men. I know on wilderness trails, it’s the men, not wild animals who are the danger also.

You are right about wondering how we would all be if we hadn’t been assaulted in various ways and sometimes I do feel like it’s an unspoken plot between all boys and men to make sure that no female escapes being damaged.

I would think that if we did have a world were rape and abuse weren’t the norm and it was male-free, then abusive girls and women would be far more rare. Or they would have to pay the consequences.

Thanks, Gallus — yes, love and support to you, Rose, and to Purplerage.

“P.S. I’m not sure what it is, but I, too, can tell when a male is present in a room.”

I remember some experiments on sweat odours, which showed that women can distinguish between the scent of their baby and someone elses (the natural scent that is, unaffected by cosmetic products), and also between the scent of their partner and other males.

Also, seems that women can also detect the scent of relatives, and prefer the scent of men who had major histocompatibility complex genes that were the most different from their own.

This is aside from the different sulphur content of male and female sweat.

Begins to look not at all surprising that we might have a pretty good nose for detecting men.

Add in probably differences in social interactions when a room is all female, as to when there is a man in the room………………….

Your grammar and writing always seem perfect to me. Please never worry. Any time that you write it is so clear and so important.

I’m so sorry that you were so tortured so young by that man, and then abused later by racist and Lesbian-hating females. I’m horrified by what so many males do, but then feel so betrayed by what females can do also. My last relationship was for almost ten years and was physically and emotionally abusive. I always hesitate to talk about it because “it wasn’t that bad” and I don’t want to further anger at women, but it doesn’t help to ignore it. It helps to still have our Radical Lesbian Feminist or Separatist politics and to be aware of the war against females and the earth, and yet know that not all females are our allies or are to be trusted.

That’s why I think it’s so important to acknowledge and be aware of differences among us in terms of privilege and oppression to be able to figure out how to have the language to recognize it and to stop it. Blanketly saying “women are the oppressed class” ignores the tremendous power some women have to bully other women, but is a way to silence any talk of differences. Yes, we share oppression and so could use that to ally. But those who use privilege to hurt are those who betray the rest and weaken our movement. If we take Lesbian-hatred (including Butch-hatred), racism, classism, ageism, ableism, and all oppressions seriously among us then we can work through cultural differences and build a more powerful, inclusive, diverse, and loving radical feminist community.

Anyway, thank you to Gallus again for making this space possible, and to you and Rose for opening this discussion. It’s clear that recognizing abuse from girls and women does not mean that men are now considered safe and trustworthy as a group. We still need our rare female-only spaces for support.

Hmm. How awful to be disillusioned about girls and women in such a violent and terrifying way.

I’ve always known that very few girls and women were “safe” because I was/am bullied, physically and verbally but largely verbally, by female peers and adults for most of my life. And I break into a sweat around older children and teens of both sexes.

And then of course there are the high statistics of abuse for lesbian relationships, though I am not sure how much I trust those numbers–especially not when I have seen them hauled out as “proof” by unsavoury types that women are just as bad as men.

Regardless, I haven’t let my guard down around anyone since about age six.

When I was younger, I thought that a women-only world would be a kind of paradise. Now I realize that there would be “scorpions, vipers and yellow jackets” there, too. Tsunamis, tornadoes, drought, locusts — all the usual pestilence and irritations. Ticks. Ringworm. Hot flashes. Blurry night vision after menopause.

_____

Also: pheromones. I have a strong sense of when a male is present (as others have mentioned) and I think it has something to do with pheromones. I will never, ever be comfortable, agreeable, OK with sharing dressing rooms, locker rooms, showers, etc. with even (especially?) post-op “trans women” because the tiny alarm bells ringing at the roots of the hair on the back of my neck let me KNOW that there is a man present and I feel VERY threatened.

NOT OK dudes. Not even a little, bitty bit OK.

This female alertness to a strange male being nearby when we’re vulnerable is no doubt a survival instinct left over from our great-great-great-great-grandmothers. What happened to the ones who didn’t have this instinct? Most of them didn’t live long enough to pass down their obliviousness — and frankly, I can’t bear to think about it.

When I first watched that Ellery Sweet’s video my heart was singing!😀 I could literally hear autogynephiles’ cocks getting soft and making an orchestrated plopping sound around the world upon seeing that video. I don’t really follow her but she gets major kudos from me for ruining countless autogynephiles’ masturbation fantasies of “becoming a woman, the ultimate transformation, ooh can you feel your cock getting hard mmm…” NOT!

Yeah but when the video ends there is a black and white thumbnail in the upper left corner something along the lines of “Transsexual Confessions” and my straight-dar was beeping like crazy, that person even manages to copy Gregory Gorgeous (self sarcastic, btw) giggle, wtf, there are a lot of gay trannies who look up to GG (after all he’s one of the most successful (inluding, financially) of makeup guru’s in general) but emulating him to the T? Anyways not fooling me. It’s funny the other day I was hypothesizing: “if a straight guy could “occupy” e.g. Gregory Gorgeous’ body would he … like… you know, jerk off looking in the mirror. It was a rhetorical question though.

Anyways I have enjoyed reading this blog. And thanks to this blog I have really made up my mind about the bathroom question (I’m not being sarcastic) up to this point I have been always choosing the disabled bathroom (who wouldn’t want an entire bathroom to themselves?) but if there’s none, if it’s a club for example then the women’s bathroom (by a close margin) since both are usually packed but yeah screw that. I remember a while ago I was going in the men’s bathroom and some f-er was just going out and started yelling at me “this is men’s MEN’S bathroom!” so I just rolled my eyes and and went to the women’s one but you know the next time I could just be upfront with them “well you see honeypie I just happen to be A MAN!” Honestly I don’t want to pave the way for autogynephiles. The other day I was lurking this TG/CD forum and there was this “transgender woman” who had taken pictures of how he was jerking off in a stall in a women’s locker room. That’s saying something…